Continuing with our series of “Best of 2015″ lists curated by the entire CCM-Entropy community, we present some of our favorite selections as nominated by the diverse staff and team here at Entropy.
This list brings together some of our favorite novels & books of fiction published in 2015.
In no particular order:
1.The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions)
“Ferrante’s accomplishment in these novels is to extract an enduring masterpiece from dissolving margins, from the commingling of self and other, creator and created, new and old, real and whatever the opposite of real may be. […] Ferrante’s voice is very much her own, but it’s force is communal. Perhaps her quartet should be seen as one of the first great works of post-authorial literature.” — Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic
2. Counternarratives by John Keene (New Directions)
“Suspenseful, thought provoking, mystical, and haunting. Keene’s confident writing doesn’t aim for easy description or evaluation; it approaches (and defies) literature on its own terms.” —Publishers Weekly
3. Binary Star by Sarah Gerard (Two Dollar Radio)
“Remarkable… Partly novelistic, partly poetical, partly meditative, Binary Star is a beautiful inversion of these rudimentary, astronomical demonstrations, where bodies stand not as replacements for planets or asteroids or gravitational pulls, but where stars and black holes and galaxies stand, instead, for bodies.” —The Millions
4. Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel (Coffee House Press)
“Michel captures the strangeness of the suburban South, and the rural wilderness surrounding it, through its chorus of blunt voices. His stories are absurd enough to reel you in, and emotionally honest enough to keep you reading.”—Huffington Post
5. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli, Translated by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House Press)
“One of the most unforgettable images in any book this year is that of Gustavo ‘Highway’ Sánchez Sánchez, the protagonist of Luiselli’s delightfully unclassifiable novel, walking around the streets of Mexico City, smiling at people with the teeth of Marilyn Monroe installed in his mouth . . . surprising and charming . . . It’s difficult not to follow wherever it takes you.”—Publishers Weekly
6. The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch (Harper)
An intensely corporal, potently feminist, tenaciously written work as alert to animal resilience as to the capacity for bruised and battered suffering, for desire, for ecstasy.” — Boston Globe
7. Disintegration by Richard Thomas (Random House)
“A dark existential thriller of unexpected twists, featuring a drowning man determined to pull the rest of the world under with him, Disintegration is a stunning and vital piece of work.”—Irvine Welsh
8. Gutshot by Amelia Gray (FSG Originals)
“Reading Gutshot is a little like being blindfolded and pelted from all sides with fire, Jell-O and the occasional live animal. You’ll be messy at the end and slightly beaten up, but surprised and certainly entertained . . . She pushes against the outer limits of what humans can and will do. She seems to be testing her readers, too. Will you come with me here? How about if I take it a little further? Are you still game?” ―Ramona Ausubel, The New York Times Book Review
9. Submission by Michel Houellebecq (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“Houellebecq has an unerring, Balzacian flair for detail, and his novels provide an acute, disenchanted anatomy of French middle-class life . . . Houellebecq writes about Islam with curiosity, fascination, even a hint of envy.” ―Adam Shatz
10. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer brilliantly draws you in with the opening line: “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.” It’s thrilling, rhythmic, and astonishing, as is the rest of Nguyen’s enthralling portrayal of the Vietnam War. The narrator is an undercover communist agent posing as a captain in the Southern Vietnamese Army. Set during the fall of Saigon and the years after in America, the captain spies on the general and the men he escaped with, sharing his information with his communist blood brothers in coded letters. But when his allegiance is called into question, he must act in a way that will haunt him forever. Political, historical, romantic and comic, The Sympathizer is a rich and hugely gratifying story that captures the complexity of the war and what it means to be of two minds. —Al Woodworth
11. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin Press)
“…It is in that gritty, claustrophobic atmosphere that Ms. Moshfegh’s talents are most apparent. This young writer already possesses a remarkably sighted view into the bleakest alleys of the psyche.” —Wall Street Journal
12. Zero Saints by Gabino Iglesias (Broken River Books)
“This is as good as it gets…a bad ass shot of the finest literary mezcal….and one damned intense, hellraising tale served up by a writer in full control of the throttle. Iglesias briliantly guides us on a hurtling, breathtaking tour of Austin’s underbelly — and firmly cements his stature in the top ranks of the most original noir novelists at work today. In a watered down world, Zero Saints is the real thing — a scary, howlingly funny, painfully aching window into that darkly savage world north of the Mexican border.” —Bill Minutaglio
13. Not Dark Yet by Berit Ellingsen (Two Dollar Radio)
“Fascinating, surreal, gorgeously written, and like nothing you’ve ever read before, Not Dark Yet is the book we all need to read right now. It is art about science, climate change, and activism, and it vitally explores how we as people deal with a world that is transforming in terrifying ways.”
—BuzzFeed
14. Painting Their Portraits in Winter by Myriam Gurba (Manic D Press)
In this artfully crafted collection of new short stories by award-winning author Myriam Gurba, nothing is as it seems on the surface. Unforgettable characters inhabit these cross-border tales filled with introspection and longing, as modern sensibilities weave and wind through traditional folktales creating a new kind of magical realism that offers insights into where we come from and where we may be going.
15. Sphinx by Anne Garréta, Translated by Emma Ramadan (Deep Vellum)
Sphinx is an almost effortlessly readable, atmospheric love story, like a Marguerite Duras novel starring a pair of genderless paramours who haunt the after-hours clubs and cabarets of Paris. The conceit is so simple and so potent that it’s impossible to get too far without pondering big questions about the role gender plays in the way we think about love in literature — and in life. — Flavorwire
16. F250 by Bud Smith (Piscataway House)
Lee Casey plays guitar in a noise band called Ottermeat, about to leave NJ, to try and make it in Los Angeles. For now, he’s squatting in a collapsing house, working as a stone mason, driving a jacked up pickup truck that he crashes into everything. As a close friend Ods in his sleep, Lee falls into a three-way relationship with two college girls, June Doom and K Neon. F250 is a novel equal parts about growing up, and being torn apart.
17. Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo (NYRB Classics)
“Magical….Ocampo’s earlier words resonate now with something of the ‘clairvoyance’ Borges once attributed to her….Mind-blowing hallucinogenic lines…make it important to take the stories in small, slow doses lest we zip by and miss them.” —Jill Schepmann, The Rumpus
18. The Strangest by Michael J. Seidlinger (OR Books)
“Step back Camus, your anti-hero has been fragmented and dispersed via the free-fall of social media. Michael J. Seidlinger’s re-visioning enters the anthropocene without apology or oxygen masks, and asks us to take the trip toward self discovery as if the self was moving particles. A kick-ass ride. A beautiful dismemberment.” —Lidia Yuknavitch
19. After Birth by Elisa Albert (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
“After Birth roars with the anger of betrayal. Albert is abrasive and sharp, intelligent and painfully real. There is no room for gentleness in her novel, no time to waste looking for a kinder way of speaking. [It’s] looking for a fight, it’s unladylike, it’s pissed off, and it’s going to tear everything you thought about birth and motherhood to shreds.” —Jeva Lange, Electric Literature
20. Family Album by Jason Snyder (Jaded Ibis Press)
By turns manic and mathematical, maudlin and gut-wrenching, and delivered with an emotional intensity somewhere between Evan Dara and Dennis Cooper, Jason Snyder’s Family Album manages to construct an exhaustive experience of youth and trauma in uncompromising style. A truly heavy hitter that couldn’t have come at a more necessary time. —Blake Butler
21. Vertigo by Joanna Walsh (Dorothy, A Publishing Project)
“With wry humor and profound sensitivity, Walsh takes what is mundane and transforms it into something otherworldly with sentences that can make your heart stop. A feat of language.” — Kirkus Reviews
22. The Weight of Things by Marianne Fritz (Dorothy, A Publishing Project)
“The Weight of Things is a tightly wrought masterwork of narrative, a little gem that shows off everything that it can (and should) do, without looking as if it were particularly trying.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
23. Desolation of Avenues Untold by Brandon Hobson (Civil Coping Mechanisms)
“Desolation of Avenues Untold is enthralling on multiple levels: as a mystery, as a slapstick comedy, as an investigation of an arcane society, as the story of a shuffling life at the edge of things. I enjoyed it enormously and I can’t wait to see what Brandon Hobson comes up with next. He’s a marvelous storyteller.” —Owen P. King
24. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Doubleday)
“Yanagihara’s immense new book, A Little Life, announces her, as decisively as a second work can, as a major American novelist. Here is an epic study of trauma and friendship written with such intelligence and depth of perception that it will be one of the benchmarks against which all other novels that broach those subjects (and they are legion) will be measured.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
25. Fancy by Jeremy Davies (Ellipsis Press)
“Whether it dissolves a genre or invents a new one, Fancy will be the most weirdly riveting and beautifully composed book you read this year. In an unlikely literary sleight-of-hand, Jeremy M. Davies transforms an agoraphobe’s catsitting instructions into a virtuoso meditation on being, perception, and solitude. He has written an utterly original novel with the fever of a Bernhard monologue and the command of a Schoenberg score.” —Eric Lundgren
26. The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector, Translated by Katrina Dodson (New Directions)
The recent publication by New Directions of five Lispector novels revealed to legions of new readers her darkness and dazzle. Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend: from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers, to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, to old people who don’t know what to do with themselves. Clarice’s stories take us through their lives—and ours. From one of the greatest modern writers, these eighty-six stories, gathered from the nine collections published during Clarice Lispector’s lifetime, follow her from her teens to her deathbed.
27. Sophia by Michael Bible (Melville House)
“Michael Bible’s Sophia is a real howl of a book. It will drill holes inside your head and then fill them with a rushing pop of words. It’s a wild journey from the deep south to New York City, with detours for chess tournaments, sexual escapades, and encounters with the holy ghost along the way. There’s a lot of pain inside this book, too, but don’t worry: you’ll enjoy it.” —Scott McClanahan
28. Get in Trouble by Kelly Link (Random House)
When the term magical realism is mentioned, it’s not uncommon for it to conjure an eye roll. There is a limited but esteemed number of writers who can pull this genre off well, and Kelly Link fits in nicely among them. She has drawn comparisons to likes of Margaret Atwood, and I would even say Angela Carter. To be sure, Get in Trouble possesses the same sort of dark, crackling wit that is a signature of their works. But Link is in a league all her own. Standouts in this short story collection are the “Summer People,” where an unwitting caretaker finds herself beholden to mischievous fairies (just go with me, here), the melancholy “Origin Story” about a woman and her erstwhile lover (who happens to be a superhero), and the less wondrously weird but affecting “The Lesson” that follows a worried gay couple anticipating the birth of their first child. For all the fantastical elements, Link’s stories dexterously explore the gamut of human emotion. This is Trouble you will enjoy getting into. –Erin Kodicek
29. The Things We Don’t Do by Andrés Neuman, Translated by Nick Canstor & Lorenza Garcia (Open Letter Books)
Good readers will find something that can be found only in great literature. . . . The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers.” —Roberto Bolaño
30. Her 37th Year, An Index by Suzanne Scanlon (Noemi Press)
“While reading Her Thirty-Seventh Year, An Index, I had to set it down many times to either think, sigh, breathe, nod, or say aloud to no one, “I wish I wrote this.” Her new book is achingly beautiful— Scanlon writes the normally unspeakable things we think about grief, heartbreak, joy, and feminism. She figures things out for us so that we don’t have to. A necessary book I will return to again and again.” —Chloe Caldwell
31. The Vorrh by B. Catling (Vintage)
“The English language has given birth to some great works of unbounded vision and imagination, and here is another one. Is it fantasy? I couldn’t care less. It’s a very sophisticated and subtle exploration of the decadent, the primitive and the mythical. Many books are said to be like nothing else, and aren’t, but Brian Catling’s really is.” —Philip Pullman, The Guardian
32. Jillian by Halle Butler (Curbside Splendor Publishing)
“A novel that reads like rubbernecking or a junk-food binge, compelling a horrified fascination and bleak laughter in the face of outrageously painted everyday sadness.” – Kirkus Reviews
33. Hospice by Gregory Howard (FC2)
“In Gregory Howard’s beautiful, brilliant first novel, stories spill out of other stories to swim, swirl, dance (sometimes giggling, sometimes smiling gravely), and collide. One thinks of the Calvino of Invisible Cities, to be sure, but also of Bruce Chatwin and his In Patagonia, in each of which a highly inventive voyager goes wandering through the world and/or through the world’s endless tales of itself. Still, deeply felt loss is the engine of the ludic impulse in Hospice, and the many games played, rituals enacted and songs sung by its characters evoke, with grace and power, our oldest truths, our most challenging conundrums, and the exhilarating ebb and flow of our sleep-wrapped lives.” —Laird Hunt
34. You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman (Harper)
“The symbols of modern anomie in this novel are familiar (soulless supermarkets, insane mass entertainments, etc.), but Ms. Kleeman has a singular, off-kilter style, and a distinct vision of the absurd horrors that can come with being trapped in a body.” —New York Times
35. Vermilion by Molly Tanzer (Word Horde)
“Old West steampunk has another appealing heroine in Lou (pair her with the equally winsome female lead of Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory) to go along with the delightfully over-the-top villains. The pages turn themselves in this debut novel from a small press that deserves a big audience.” —LIBRARY JOURNAL
36. The Pulse Between Dimensions and the Desert by Rios De La Luz (Broken River Books)
“Rios de la Luz’s writing blows minds and breaks hearts. A sort of new and bizarre Tomás Rivera, Rios is able to blend the familiar of the domestic with the all the wilderness of the universe. Her stories will grab you in places you didn’t know you had, take you by those places to where you’ve always wanted to go—though you never knew how to get there. Buy this book and enjoy that journey.” —Brian Allen Carr
37. Bad Sex by Clancy Martin (Tyrant Books)
“I loved this novel. It’s dark and sexy and unrepentant. The story of a relapsed alcoholic having an affair. No more and no less. Brett is a flinty character. The narrative voice is spectacular.” –Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist
38. Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (HarperTeen)
“Noelle Stevenson has a knack for capturing the humor and heart in a situation in just a few panels.” —Rainbow Rowell
39. Wichita Stories by Troy James Weaver (Future Tense Books)
“There are moments, reading Witchita Stories, where everything dropped away, and I was speechless, or at least whatever the equivalent of speechless is when you’re not talking in the first place. There is a deep sadness to these stories, and humor, but most importantly, honesty. This feels real and heavy and it’s just about the best thing I’ve read in a long time.” —J. David Osborne
40. A Manual for Cleaning Women: Stories by Lucia Berlin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“In A Manual for Cleaning Women we witness the emergence of an important American writer, one who was mostly overlooked in her time. Ms. Berlin’s stories make you marvel at the contingencies of our existence. She is the real deal. Her stories swoop low over towns and moods and minds.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times
41. Jacob The Mutant by Mario Bellatin, Translated by Jacob Steinberg (Phoneme Media)
“Bellatin’s unusual narrative world doesn’t need to exceed the conventional limits of the short novel in order to take possession of mind of the reader, who’s left seduced by the turbid and convulsive beauty of his stories.” —El País (Spain)
42. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
“Binti is utterly captivating… [and] shows that one girl can change the course of the galaxy.” ―Michaela Gray, Geek Syndicate
43. The Sleep of the Righteous by Wolfgang Hilbig (Two Lines Press)
Doppelgängers, a murderer’s guilt, pulp noir, fanatical police, and impossible romances—these are the pieces from which German master Wolfgang Hilbig builds a divided nation battling its demons. Delving deep into the psyches of both East and West Germany, The Sleep of the Righteous reveals a powerful, apocalyptic, utterly personal account of the century-defining nation’s postwar struggles. In the words of 2015 International Man Booker Prize recipient László Krasznahorkai, Hilbig “described a world which is distasteful not only to the Germans but actually horrific for all of us.”
44. Jigsaw Youth by Tiffany Scandal (Ladybox Books)
“Tiffany Scandal is one of the most exciting new voices to emerge in years. A deft, masterful mix of both bizarro and horror. I definitely can’t wait to read what she writes next!” —Brian Keene, author of The Rising and Ghoul
45. The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson (Penguin Press)
“The Star Side of Bird Hill is, at its core, a story about mothers and daughters. But the rich and colorful world Ms. Jackson renders on the page moves well beyond that, too, setting itself the task of exploring so much more…Ms. Jackson has a deft hand with characterization — all of the people she creates feel utterly human…There are questions, pain, tenderness, and also wisdom in [the] writing…Naomi Jackson vividly delivers two entirely different worlds and a whole range of experiences that taught me a little bit more about how to be a better human.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
46. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com)
“This rich, delicately crafted world is stocked with vibrant characters… and supports a powerful story told in a delightful series of wrenching moments.” ―Publishers Weekly
47. Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson (Lazy Fascist Press)
“A nightmarish yet hilarious journey that begins in the ugly world of toxic mortgages and progresses to the slightly uglier world of brain-eating monsters lurking in dark alleys. You’re in for an entirely unpredictable ride, the tale spinning ludicrously out of control as the hero uncovers layer after grotesque layer of a vast macabre conspiracy. Skullcrack City is original, utterly insane, and a shitload of fun.” — David Wong, author of John Dies at the End
48. Scary People by Kyle Muntz (Eraserhead Press)
“Kind of like what might happen if Richard Brautigan had been hired to co-write an episode of Adventure Time. Scary People is playful and painful and surreally real, and great fun to read.” —Brian Evenson
49. Beauty Is a Wound Eka Kurniawan, Translated by Annie Tucker (New Directions)
“An unforgettable, all-encompassing epic… Upon finishing the book, the reader will have the sense of encountering not just the history of Indonesia but its soul and spirit. This is an astounding, momentous book.” (Publishers Weekly
50. The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams (Knopf)
“[This] is powerfully united by Joy Williams’s profound gift for illuminating, with compassion and mordant humor, characters on the jagged edge of grief and spiritual ruin. . . . The search for mercy is at odds with a landscape that is increasingly merciless—and yet hope remains [and]the stories are rich with tenderness. . . . The Visiting Privilege is also laced with Williams’s trademark cutting wit, which provides a small release, as of steam escaping through a pressure valve, while also pushing the stories’ dark absurdity.” —Laura Van Den Berg
Honorable Mention: Ghostmaker by Chiwan Choi
Extending the Katz’s Deli micro-residency structure over the course of one year, Chiwan Choi wrote and presented chapters of his text, Ghostmaker, every other month in various sites across Los Angeles County. Upon reading, each chapter was destroyed and no textual or auditory documentation retained. In place of the original manuscripts, Katz’s Deli was contracted to gather and construct a text composed of witness testimony from each event, resulting in a new communal manuscript. By connecting the production, destruction, and reproduction of a book to months of the year and areas of Los Angeles, Chiwan Choi and Katz’s Deli asked, what would it be to spatialize the experience of a manuscript, both geographically and socially?